Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Actions that are at once aesthetic and political, set in an urban setting, have been the hallmark of Daniel Lima's (Natal-RN, 1973) work, from his sculpture-like experiments with laser beams to his involvement in media intervention groups, linked to the international wave of activism of the '00' years. His search for a wider, more random field of action than that of the art scene, has brought Lima closer to the city, both as a physical place and as a web of codified power and exchange relationships. To suspend the usual perception of those relationships, replacing it with a tension that might or might not convey specific messages, is the basic goal of his art, which mixes genres freely, and much more than just aiming at a given result, encompasses the entire process from the planning of the action to its recording. 

Lima has been combining art with the urban setting ever since Daniel na Cova dos Leões (2001), his Plastic Arts graduation work for the School of Communications and Arts at USP. The video features interventions in which he uses sand to draw a fleeting line on an avenue, from inside a moving car, as well as recordings of city light trails from a train window. That sequence inaugurated an important field of research, followed by light-filled drawings created with helicopters and recorded using photography, culminating with the Coluna Laser (2001-2005) series, in which Lima used the plasticity of laser beams to create urban interventions loaded with meaning. Presented at the Sonarsound festival (2004), Coluna Laser II - Opostos connected the favela of Paraisópolis to the São Paulo Business Center. In the following year, Coluna Laser III - Mar would project itself from the pier of MAM in Bahia into the Atlantic, rebuilding the elusive bridge from Salvador to Africa during the 1st Pan-African Exhibition of Contemporary Art.

The maturation of Lima's sophisticated plastic work, reaching an important milestone with the Coluna Laser series, runs parallel to his use of hip-hop culture elements (in seminal works such as Pichação Laser, 2001), to the emergence of social issues, and to his experiments with various forms of intervention, both solo and in groups, recorded in video or through photography. In Tudo que está no alto é como o que está embaixo (2003) Lima attaches himself to a drawbridge and follows its upward motion like a hidden passenger. In Blitz (2002), he takes pictures with military policemen, showing the embarrassment of all parties involved, and thus approaching the issue of police racism with an ironic twist. In that same year, along with his brother, DJ Eugênio Lima, Daniel created the A Revolução Não Será Televisionada show, featuring images of interventions, live music, and narration-a format which he would often explore, with variations, in the following years.

Lima's next move was the creation of a media group, named after the Gil Scott-Heron song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, featuring Fernando Coster, André Montenegro, and Daniela Labra, dedicated to producing media interferences and defying the mass communication establishment. The group created a show for TV USP including aggressive experimental edits of video work by artists such as Lia Chaia, Tiago Judas, Ricardo Ramalho, Túlio Tavares, and Bijari, excerpts from regular TV shows, and narration. The activist tone attracted the attention of art critic Ricardo Rosas, who included the group in the Mídia Tática Brasil festival (2003), featuring local and international collectives who work along similar lines. At the festival, ARNSTV performed an action recorded in the video Famosos em passeio, Famosos em chamas, in which they walk around the city carrying life-sized reproductions of TV celebrities, exploring the irony of their static expressions to the most, and finally burning them in a bonfire on Avenida Paulista. 

Produced in that same year, along with the Cia. Cachorra theater group (Fabiana Prado, Melina Anthis e Paula Pretta), the piece Liberte-se goes back to the concept of putting on a show in the form of a recorded urban intervention. In the piece, comprised of actions in three different cities, anonymous people provide the viewers with food for thought on the title phrase Liberte-se [Free Yourself], while the originality of the intervention strategies made up by Lima-in one of the video's sequences he invites children to sell leaflets with the title phrase written on it and empty bullet shells, for R$ 1, at a stop sign-is featured. Subverting the use of alternative spaces for communication and exchange is a staple strategy in the work of Lima-who, during that same period, along with Fernando Coster, recorded artist Jailtão's attempt at selling tolerance and awareness to the passengers in a city bus. 

Daniel Lima had approached police racism and abuse in his participation at the 8th Havana Biennial, 2003, when he locked up policemen in a city square, and returned to the issue from 2004 onwards, when he became a member of the Frente 3 de Fevereiro collective. Founded by Daniel's mother Maurinete Lima, in reaction to the murder of young Black lawyer Flávio Sant'Ana by the São Paulo Military Police, the group placed a concrete plaque marking the crime site in its inaugural action, Monumento Horizontal (2004), borrowing a strategy used by activists in Argentina during the country's military dictatorship years. Also featuring Achiles Luciano, André Montenegro, Cibele Lucena, Eugênio Lima, Felipe Teixeira, Felipe Brait, Fernando Coster, Fernando Sato, Julio Dojcsar, Maia Gongora, Maysa Lepique, Nô Cavalcanti, Pedro Guimarães, and Sônia Montenegro, the Frente explores a racist episode in the performance Futebol, commissioned for Associação Cultural Videobrasil to kick off the 15th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (2005). 

In charge of the artistic management, along with Eugênio Lima, and action strategies for the group's presentations-such as the giant banner, unfurled inside a full soccer stadium in the moment of a goal, with the inscription “Onde Estão os Negros?” [“Where Are The Black People?”] in the piece Futebol-, Daniel Lima keeps working in many different fields, often expanding the limits of his work, and of the combination of art and urban interventions. In 2004, along with Fernando Coster and Thiago Dotori, he directed the B-Boys who danced in DJ Malocca's Mutant Break music video, featuring producers Will Robson and Noizyman, and singer Clara Moreno. In 2005, Lima participated in Perambulação, a collaborative project that summoned Brazilian and Dutch artists at the 2nd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam; he also coordinated the CUBO intervention, by Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, featuring the A Revolução Não Será Televisionada, Bijari, Cia. Cachorra, C.O.B.A.I.A., Contra Filé, and Perda Total collectives, in São Paulo; and presented the ironic Arrastão intervention, featuring thirty male blond models in the Ipanema and Leblon beaches, in Rio de Janeiro, during the Prog: Me new media festival.